Heisler: Clippers going back to losing, just without the laughs

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Clippers owner Steve Ballmer celebrates after the team defeated the San Antonio Spurs in Game 7 of a Western Conference first-round playoff series in 2015 at Staples Center. The front office is retooling a roster that produced several 50-win seasons but few playoff series victories. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

That was a peculiar laughingstock with a peculiar leading man, the one and only Donald Sterling.

The Clippers, who weren’t closing in on any titles, made the gutsy move and the smart one, which could lead to two lottery picks – little as that would be to show after losing Blake Griffin with Chris Paul already gone, DeAndre Jordan and Lou Williams possibly next and Coach Doc Rivers after that?

So much for the Clippers’ heyday that so few here noticed or cared about.

They’re long past the Lob City days in 2011 when the Lakers were still royalty but Kobe Bryant agreed the Clippers were the most exciting team in town, marveling, “Blake Griffin has, like, a 60-inch vertical.”

Nor are the Clippers the ill-starred contenders who averaged 55 wins the last five seasons, No. 3 in the NBA after the Warriors and Spurs.

Now rebuilding, the Clippers won’t even be good for laughs. Without Donald, it’s like doing “Seinfeld” without Jerry Seinfeld.

Worst of all, they’re nobody’s darlings.

Griffin was their breakthrough star, until last week. ESPN’s Zach Lowe recently described an outing in a Beverly Hills coffee shop when two teens noticed Blake and began texting friends until a group of about 50 waited outside, chanting “BG, 32!” and “Let’s go, Clippers!”

Nevertheless, on an institutional level, the Clippers barely registered locally.

They’re without a home if that means anything more than averaging 16,641 in Staples Center – down 12 percent from last season – with a small cable audience … even while dominating the Lakers on the court, beating them in the standings the last five seasons – by 137 games – and winning the last 14 meetings dating back four years.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer suggested the trade wasn’t his idea, noting “Change is hard,” but pointing out “My confidence in our front office, led by Lawrence Frank and Michael Winger, along with the sage counsel of Jerry West, has never been higher.”

Nevertheless, after plunking down $2 billion to buy the team in 2014, Ballmer has come to his defining moment.

Jerry Buss, who set the standard for NBA owners, had the the wisdom to let West call the shots but the vision to insist that they fielded a crowd-pleasing team that appealed to the local movie stars, marrying their identity to local hopes and dreams.

The Lakers weren’t just successful and entertaining, they had an identity that local fans basked in:

We are all glamorous, stars and townspeople united in backing this team!

The Lakers offer glitz and tradition that embraces legends like Magic, Kareem, Big Game James, Shaq and Kobe.

The Clippers offer ugly duckling chic and hope nobody looks back.

“I think there is a whole side of L.A. that’s hard-working, tough-minded,” Ballmer told the Los Angeles Times last fall. “We’re just going to ride it out and show L.A. what it means to be tough. … We are persistent. We are diligent. We are hard core. We’ll have our day in the sun.”

Instead, the skies became cloudy all day. Injuries finished off title hopes despite a brave effort that kept them in playoff contention sparked by unknowns like Tyrone Wallace, prompting them to concede the obvious … setting back their day in the sun for more years, or decades.

The question of what the Clippers are doing here goes back to their 1984 move after Sterling proved too zany for San Diego.

Nobody much cared in the Sports Arena era that ended in 2000 when Sterling hit upon the brilliant – no, seriously – idea of wrangling an invitation to the new Staples Center, just as the team’s talent level turned up.

Their Elton Brand-Sam Cassell team broke through in 2006, if only by a tick and for a moment when the local TV audience for their second-round loss to Phoenix surpassed that of the Lakers’ first-round loss to those same Suns.

Flying to Phoenix for the Clippers’ Game 4 on the plane of director James L. Brooks, a Clippers arch-fan, was Lakers arch-fan Jack Nicholson.

Ballmer bought the Clippers at a high point in 2014 after the Sterling scandal and a first-round victory over Golden State, before the Warriors became a super team and all but ended competition in the Western Conference.

The record for a purchase price was then the $530 million paid for Sacramento in 2013. A year later the Clippers drew three bids more than twice that – from Ballmer, the Oprah Winfrey group ($1.6 billion) and the Grant Hill group ($1.2 billion).

The Clippers’ actual worth is another question. Forbes projects an $11 million loss last season as salaries rose to $115 million with a luxury tax of $20 million … looking at a $200 million tab as luxury tax repeaters if they re-signed Paul and J.J. Redick.

Ballmer intended to pay up but never got the chance to prove it. Paul, despairing of overhauling the Warriors, bolted for Houston.

Griffin, who loved Southern California, is in (ouch) Detroit, posting a wordless Instagram photo of Will Smith going bug-eyed in surprise that went viral … relieving Ballmer of the $173 million deal he gave Blake in the owner’s Clipper-for-life pitch, which had become gargantuan under the circumstances.

As for the future, assuming better times await in any of our lifetimes:

It’s hard to imagine the Clippers turning their history around without more support, here or somewhere more hospitable … like the O.C., which has a discreet fan base that turns out 3,000,000 annually for the Angels … or Seattle, Ballmer’s home, the once-vibrant NBA market that wants back in.

There has never been the sense of urgency around the Clippers, to say nothing of the hysteria around marquee teams like the Lakers. It’s all the Clippers can expect in Staples or the arena in Inglewood which Ballmer muses about while seeking better dates where he is.

Unfortunately, it’s not much of a threat with their Staples lease running through 2024.

Whatever the Clippers are or aren’t, they’re still ours or, at least, wish they were.